Finding candidates with a "teachable fit"

With records levels of unemployment some organisations are still struggling to fill key positions. Simply the skills required and the people available do not always match up.

Flexibility and agility is a key part of success in today’s world of work, and individuals often now experience several career transitions during their working life. Employers must adapt and take advantage of this flexibility to ensure they have the talent they need. Employers should consider candidates who may not meet all of the job specifications, but whose capability gaps can be filled in a timely and cost-effective way. A commitment to re-skilling and up-skilling current and potential employees will enable organisations to expand the available pools of talent (both internal and external), ensure that their workforces continue to be appropriately skilled and keep employees engaged in their work. The key to this new mindset is the ability to identify a “teachable fit.”

So how can you use online recruitment to identify this "teachable fit" and what role can it play? Lesley Nash explains:

"I agree whole heartedly with the notion of "teachable fit" when recruiting and have to admit that the increased use of online recruitment systems with automated screening has, in many cases just made matters worse and encouraged organisations to become narrow minded in their search for perfection. ‘In’ or ‘Out’ is the order of the day for many organisations.

Online questionnaires, in inexperienced hands are often used as blunt instruments to find perfection and reject the rest. The ubiquitous use of killer questions, or showstoppers give no room for highlighting those candidates who don’t quite match the specific skills set needed but DO have a ‘teachable fit’.

Killer questions are the quick and dirty way to get a questionnaire set up and start to sift volume. And yes, they can help you find the top stars, but an awful lot of talent can get overlooked when the bar is set to perfection.

We have been helping clients for over 10 years at the very beginning of the selection process to not only identify the star talent ie the A candidates, but also to identify those with potential, with a ‘teachable fit’, ie the B candidates. What is needed are flexible questionnaires and sophisticated scoring tools along with a good dose of common sense when it comes to questionnaire design.

So City Inn and Mitchells and Butlers are both able to be flexible and agile when it comes to recruitment and filling their capability gaps by having a pool of candidates who can be identified as either star performers, or those with potential worth investing in. Long may that continue."